Chapter 7 Ghosts of the Past

He got into his car parked outside the cemetery. It was an old silver sedan he had kept in the garage. It was his backup car after the truck was destroyed.

Van did not go to the police. He didn't go to the hospital or go home.

His home was no more.

He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other pressed to his side.

The dried blood on his torn suit was a stubborn reminder of the ambush.

He checked at the rearview and side mirror.

Four cars were behind.

Then two.

Then none.

He took three sequential right turns through an abandoned shipping yard, his eyes darting at the mirrors. No car showed up twice. No headlights followed. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He stopped inside the shadow of an overpass for a few minutes, engine still running.

Satisfied that no one was tailing him, Van parked the sedan inside an open cargo container and covered the remaining distance on foot.

The auto shop around the corner had been closed for six years now. That was after he relocated his business to the outskirts of town.

He still had the keys. It was on his keyring.

The property wasn't in his name.

But it belonged to him.

The land was used by the city council as a junkyard to dump abandoned cars. He didn't mind. He had no use for the property anyways. Not until now.

He went round the property still ignoring the pain.

No one. Not even a scavenger going through the scrap pile. Or even a stray dog.

He got to the front and inserted the key. He twisted the key in the lock hole hard. It was a mixture of old age on the lock and a lack of strength in his body.

The lock finally opened and he rolled the garage door up. It got stuck. It hadn't been lubricated in years. He pulled it down and rolled up again, this time with more effort.

The door opened with a loud creak.

As he went inside, the metal door sealed shut behind him with a dull thud.

Van was alone in the darkness. He reached for the wall, feeling for something.

He wasn't looking for a light switch. That would blow his cover. He was looking for something else.

He found it.

He raised the lid and a keypad illuminated his face with white light.

It was a security bypass. It had no retina, facial or fingerprint scanner. It was old school.

It only had A-z, 0-9 and some special symbols.

He pressed the keys one after the other. X, -, 5 ,3 ,4 and 9.

It flashed red. Wrong code.

Van paused a bit.

X-5349

That was his military service number. It was his identity. He could never get it wrong.

X-5349

Wrong code, again?

Or had he changed it and forgotten the new one? But he hadn't been here for six years and this was the only code he could remember.

He then saw something that caught his attention. A hint of sorts.

Just by the side panel some words were written.

‘Keypad is case sensitive’

A light bulb flashed in his brain.

Case sensitive? He remembered now.

x-5349

The keypad flashed green.

‘Welcome General Van Zero’

A door slid open revealing a stairwell leading underground. It was dark as expected. He counted the steps as he went down. He stopped on the first landing and listened for some seconds.

Nothing but his own breathing and the drip of a pipe.

Van reached up, blindly locating the distribution box by muscle memory. He turned on the circuit breaker. Light bulbs flickered to life, buzzing with a low hum that illuminated the bunker.

The air was stale, filled with the distinct scent of aged concrete and undisturbed dust.

Van stood motionless at the threshold, his neck turning as he inspected the area.

An unmade bed. Wooden table and shelf. The wood hadn't been disturbed by insects. A duffel bag on the bed half zipped.

Nothing had been moved since he was last here.

He set the envelope and shrapnel on the table, removing the suit. First the jacket then the shirt.

This place was before Laura and Noah.

A version of him lived here completely untouched by the warmth of the family he had just buried. That man was supposed to be dead. He should have burned this place when he got out.

He looked around for a first aid box so he could tend to his injury. But his eyes didn't sit right with the place.

He looked around more carefully this time.

The bunker hadn't been ransacked. But the layer of dust coating the shelves wasn't uniform. There was a faint break on the edges. A place where a hand briefly rested.

He lowered his gaze to the filing cabinet bolted to the wall. A drawer containing highly classified documents from his operations was closed, but the metal seam wasn't perfectly flush. It was misaligned by a few inches.

Someone had been here.

Van approached the cabinet. He didn't open the drawer. He carefully examined the lock. It was broken. But the position was wrong, inconvenient for a left-handed person like him. Whoever opened the lock was right-handed.

He reached for his keys and pulled the drawer open. Inside, were organised manila folders and sealed operational reports.

Van began to search. His bloodstained hands moved with precision, checking the alpha-numeric codes printed on the side of each file against the mental index he had memorized way back.

None of it was missing. Whoever had breached this bunker came to browse his personal archives.

He moved to the back of the drawer, his fingers trailing over the most classified folders in his collection.

The space between an operational ledger from his last deployment and his own redacted service history was empty.

Van stared at the tiny gap in the folders.

They hadn't taken anything. Only one file. They knew exactly what they were looking for, where he kept it and wanted to be certain Van would notice it was gone. It was a message. Just like the black envelope left in the cemetery. They were leading him down a very specific road, forcing him to follow their breadcrumbs.

Van closed his eyes, his mind rapidly rewinding through organized military memories. He pictured the folder that had occupied that exact, empty space. He remembered the red ink stamped across the restricted clearance seal, warning of high treason for unauthorized access. He remembered the two words typed cleanly across the center of the tab, words he had hoped to never see again.

He opened his eyes. He didn't speak. He just stared at the empty space in the cabinet, the weight of the missing file pressing down on him.

The two words repeated clearly in his head.

Black Crown.